PVCC Puma Press: April 2006

While the legislative battle over how much money Arizona needs to place into English Learner programs continues in the state capital, Palomino Elementary School faces high student mobility, low teacher pay and supply shortages.

The school, which lies in the middle of the Palomino square, functions in an area stricken with poverty, crime and drugs. It’s a region easily ignored and passed through by the majority of middle-to-upper-class citizens living in Northeast Phoenix.

Dr. Ana Ramos-Pell, Principal of Palomino 1 elementary school, faces a student mobility rate that varies between 60 and 90 percent.

“You’re looking at children who come and leave within a very short period of time,” Ramos-Pell says. “You’re also looking at children who primarily have undocumented parents and are undocumented themselves. This comes with a whole set of issues.”

Ramos-Pell describes the Palomino Square as a pit stop for many illegal immigrants, a place where undocumented workers have family. As soon as they find a job and gather their bearings, it’s off to the first apartment special in another part of town.

A high proportion of students have parents in jail, addicted to drugs and living on the streets, according to Ramos-Pell.

The teachers burnout quickly as a result of the stressors that come with teaching in a high-risk, ELL (English language learner) environment, Ramos-Pell says. She watches around 50 percent of new teachers leave within the first two years.

“They’re not just teachers,” Ramos-Pell says, “ They have to solve social problems. If a child comes to school homeless, that teacher feels responsible.”

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	Napolitano has vetoed three bills proposed by the Republican controlled legislature
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Most of the teachers at the school hardly break the $30,000 per year mark and senior teachers, pushing retirement, barely make $40,000, Ramos-Pell says. District-wide starting salaries for PVUSD are $31, 027.

Last month, during a speech at Phoenix College, Governor Janet Napolitano said her administration plans to increase teacher salary statewide and initiate teacher mentor programs to boost the effectiveness of English Learner Programs, re-election pending.

he said that in some parts of Arizona, teachers are being paid as little as $23,000 per year.

The Paradise Valley Unified School District has already set up a teacher-mentoring program. However, due to a lack of funding the teacher-to-mentor ratio stays at about 120 to one, according to Ramos-Pell.

“It’s fine to put these programs together,” Ramos-Pell says. “But when you don’t fund them to the degree they need to be funded, that program isn’t effective.”
But how much funding is enough funding?

Since the end of 2005, Napolitano has vetoed three bills proposed by the Republican-controlled legislature because she said they didn’t provide enough funding to English programs. The move cost the state $21 million in court fines that U.S District Court Judge Raner Collins decided would go back into schools.

Napolitano let the fourth bill; HB2064 become law without her signature, although she doesn’t believe the measure will meet the judge’s requirements.

The bill HB2064 will provide an extra $32 million to ELL programs, an amount Ramos-Pell says doesn’t even scratch the surface of the state’s educational needs.

Becky Hill, Napolitano’s advisor on education agrees, saying that although the new state law would increase funding from $355 to $432 per student, Napolitano’s administration is pushing for at least $677.

Hill added that Napolitano says it’s important to tie the dollar to the strategy through increased teacher wages, teacher training and adequate supplies for students.

“A lot of politicians believe that adding more money to the situation is going to improve it without really addressing whether it works in the first place,” says Garry Tupper, underdog gubernatorial candidate and self-proclaimed independent republican. Tupper has been working the community college circuit in an attempt to register students to vote. “It’s one thing to recognize the problems, but throwing money at them isn’t a solution.”

Yet according to Roma-Pell, in the culture of poverty that surrounds her school, money is always a viable solution.

Collins decision to funnel the $21 million in fines will help to ease some short-term hardships, adding an extra $140 per student to buy additional school supplies.

Since November 2000, schools in Arizona have been teaching under the English-only education law, which prohibits textbooks, teaching, and even bulletin boards, to be in any other language than English.

Tupper says English-only programs in Arizona have been unproductive, and he believes bilingual education would be more effective for new non-English speaking students.